Concealed carry? Not at Illinois colleges and universities

Other than putting signs on campus building doors that remind visitors that guns aren’t welcome — imagine a no smoking sign but with a gun instead of a cigarette — there is virtually no change in how universities operate when it comes to weapons, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Campus Police Chief Jeff Christensen said.

“There has not been much debate about it,” Christensen said. “There is some apprehension because it’s something new, but we are the last state in the nation to do this. Everyone has survived this. It has not been as traumatic as some make it out to be.”

Schools are the sites of America’s most horrific mass shootings, including the 2008 attack at Cole Hall on the Northern Illinois University campus. The gun prohibition on college campuses raises the question of whether armed students could prevent such attacks or if more guns would only make matters worse.

A federal court in December 2012 ordered Illinois to provide a legal framework that allowed residents to carry firearms. This year, Illinois became the last state in the U.S. to institute laws that allow at least some residents to carry firearms.

The first batch of concealed carry licenses in Illinois history — requiring 16 hours of training, a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card and an extensive background check — were issued this month.

Illinois remains restrictive in comparison to many states. Guns cannot be carried openly under the law and carrying a gun requires a license. The law also contains a lengthy list of places where guns are prohibited even with a concealed carry license, including public and private universities.

State universities are adopting at least one minor policy change in addition to making allowances for Army Reserve Officers Training Corps students.

The law allows visitors with an Illinois concealed carry license to store a weapon within a case inside a parked vehicle on college campuses. The law also gives colleges the option of designating certain parking areas for vehicles containing weapons.

But most in the college law enforcement community see that as a poor option, Rock Valley College Police Chief Joe Drought said.

“It’s not a good idea because you are telling any would-be weapons thief, if you want a high percentage chance to find a gun, look here,” Drought said.

The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Northern Illinois University in DeKalb have adopted the same parking policy on their campuses and satellite campuses. NIU, however, also offers the option of storing a weapon at the campus public safety building, which U of I does not.

But NIU Professor Emeritus Jack Bennett can’t help but reflect on Feb. 14, 2008, when a psychologically disturbed young man burst onto the stage of a Cole Hall lecture room and opened fire in the very place where Bennett had conducted so many classes during a career that spanned 33 years.

Steven Phillip Kazmierczak, 27, a U of I graduate student and former NIU student, shot and killed five NIU students and injured 21 others during what has been called the darkest day in NIU history. Kazmierczak shot and killed himself on the lecture hall stage.

Bennett says the carnage was over and Kazmierczak was dead before police charged into the auditorium. He wonders how that day might have been different if a handful of students had been armed and trained to shoot back.

“One or two of the 200-plus students with a weapon and the required skill could have easily reduced or stopped the damage,” Bennett said. “Signs on the doors give the criminal or the mentally ill person who wishes to kill a guarantee that no one will have a weapon to stop their inhuman activity. That notice is a license to kill.”

But NIU and college administrators across the state do not want to see their students packing heat. They rely on campus police to maintain safety and order, not armed teenagers and young adults, said Paul Palian, director of media and public relations.

“Administrators do not believe guns have a place in school,” Palian said. “It’s a place for higher learning and, as such, there is not a need to introduce guns onto campus.”

Kazmierczak’s decision to attack students at NIU, from which he had graduated with a 3.8 GPA and a double major in sociology and political science, and not U of I where he was a graduate student has haunted Christensen for six years.

“Why there and not here?” Christensen still wonders. “Bottom line is that police officers train extensively for those situations. You are talking combat here. Whether (armed students) would have made a difference or not … the detrimental effect of having weapons on campus versus the potential difference (they could have made) outweighs that argument.”